The primaries in Indiana and North Carolina will probably not put the Wright/Obama story to sleep – not so long as there are Clintons and Republicans stirring up trouble – but it should advance the narrative and maybe even alter it. The broad outlines of the next stage are clear. It is very unlikely that African American voters will desert Obama for his repudiation of his pastor; though there is reason to think they should. With the Wright affair still percolating, it remains to be seen how much worse or better Obama does with white working class ethnic (i.e. Catholic) voters. Most likely, the data generated in these next primaries will be equivocal, and therefore susceptible to a variety of spins. Moreover, it is unlikely that these primaries will change much in the larger Obama v. Clinton story. According to the polls, Obama will probably win North Carolina and barely win or barely lose in Indiana – leading the Clintons to plod on for their own sakes and John McCain’s.
Though one would hardly know it from media discussions, there actually are insights to be gleaned from the Wright/Obama saga. They have to do mainly with the deleterious role of religion in politics -- and in general. But that is not a topic that gets raised in our political culture. Doing so is considered “uncivil.” In promoting this false and disabling view, the liberals are the worst. Though many of them know better, they can’t cut “faith” enough slack. Thanks to them, there has arisen a miasma so thick that one cannot even tell for sure whether Hillary Clinton’s saccharine spirituality (from her “politics of meaning” days to the present) is sincere or whether Barack Obama’s professions of faith are (or were) more opportunist than genuine. If he is to be our President, one can only hope that opportunism has been the main factor, but the evidence is not promising.
Of course, the “black Church,” which Reverend Wright self-servingly deems under attack in the guise of attacks on him, is a more complicated problem, calling for a more nuanced assessment. At the most basic level, it is as bad as the rest. But it has also been a haven for black resistance – from the days of slavery, through Jim Crow, to the not-as-post-racial-as-Obama-would-like present. Evidently, the Reverend Wright is no outlier in its complex and multi-faceted ranks. He is certainly no “worse” – more “inflammatory,” that is – than the now venerated Martin Luther King Jr. But one would have no notion of this from the Clinton-McCain attack machine or its many friends in the mainstream media.
There is an interesting psychological dimension to the Wright/Obama story. It is not surprising that Obama would feel obliged to turn on Wright; politicians do what they gotta do. But, assuming that he knew what he was doing at the National Press Club, as he surely did -- why did Wright turn on Obama? No doubt part of he explanation is just that, as a “true believer,” the man is a bit unhinged – even when he is generally right. But I suspect that an impolitic need to piss off the right people was also at work. I thoroughly sympathize. When I read that a gaggle of rabbis and “leading” advocates for the Tribal State want Jews like me to boycott the Olympics this year – in protest over the handful of human rights violations for which Israel is not mainly responsible – I’m inclined to set aside my differences with the capitalist-roaders in charge of (formerly but still officially Communist) China, if only to spit in their collective face. Maybe Wright succumbed to a similar temptation when challenged by a similarly noxious Democratic Party and “liberal” press.
How ironic that the Wright/Obama miasma should engulf the political scene just at a moment when inklings of policy differences between Obama and Clinton are finally emerging. Since neither of them would dare take on the insurance and pharmaceutical companies that have made health care in the United States the most costly in the world, the only significant policy difference to have emerged until now was whether universal coverage was more likely to be approximated with or without compulsory mandates. Common sense says that Clinton was right to follow John Edwards’ lead in insisting on mandates. But in the real world common sense isn’t always right. In the end, the question turns on speculations about intended and unintended consequences that no one can firmly establish. I suspect that Obama’s no mandates position is worse than Clinton’s contrary view; but it isn’t obviously worse, as one might suppose. On the other hand, when Clinton sides with John McCain on a federal gas tax holiday for the summer months, as she recently did, and Obama points out that this is just a “gimmick” that will further impoverish the national treasury while increasing demand for petroleum products, likely canceling out savings to consumers, he is clearly right. Or when, with Cheney and Bush clamoring ever more loudly for war with Iran, Clinton salivates at the prospect of bombing that country – bombing being her family’s favored method for waging illegal wars – while Obama demurs (not nearly forcefully enough), Obama is less wrong than she is.
One would expect that these developments will weigh on the minds of voters in Indiana and North Carolina. But, in recent weeks, the atmosphere has become more than usually clouded thanks to the Wright stuff. Even so, when the sun rises Wednesday morning, perhaps we will have a better idea whether voters can see through the miasma well enough to take these few “issues” differences into account. If they can, it bodes well for Obama’s prospects in November. If not, it bodes poorly, suggesting that, despite his glaring deficiencies, McCain just might win.
In the current issue of The Progressive magazine, Adolph Reed argues forcefully that both the Obama and Clinton candidacies are problematic enough – in ways that have already become apparent and in ways that will doubtless emerge as the Republicans go into full attack mode – that either one is likely to lose. If he’s right, it raises the question of which of Obama or Clinton one would rather see fail. Reed argues that, all things considered, it would be worse if Obama loses. His argument is cogent. My quarrel is with its premise. I still believe that John McCain is too Bush-like, too neo-con, too irascible, too dim witted, and too much of a warmonger to win this time around – no matter how much the Democrats destroy their own chances. But the longer the Clintons persist in their vain pursuit of the office they think their due, the more likely it is that Reed’s prediction will come true.
Showing posts with label Obama's pastor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama's pastor. Show all posts
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
I Have a Dream
Conventional wisdom, conveyed infallibly by Cokie Roberts on NPR and by scores of others, is that Jeremiah Wright’s recent media appearances – on Bill Moyers’ PBS show, at an NAACP dinner in Los Angeles, and at the National Press Club – are a problem for Barack Obama. Ever careful not to challenge the conventional wisdom, watch for Obama to distance himself even more blatantly from his old friend and mentor. I have a dream, though – that Obama will tell Cokie and the others where to go.
Were he to say forthrightly that Wright is right -- except maybe for one over the top remark about the government’s role in spreading HIV/AIDS in the black community and, of course, for the godly spin that shrouds his otherwise keen observations – Obama would move out of the lesser evil category into the ranks of candidates who are worth supporting with (measured and critical) enthusiasm, and not just because of whom they are running against. But this is even less likely than that she whom Obama is running against will come to the aid of her party by just going away. Nevertheless, the fact remains: what the good Reverend said about racism and America’s role in the world is on point, timely and urgent. If there is a pundit sophistically clever enough to show (not just assert) otherwise, she or he is still slouching towards CNN headquarters --or the headquarters of one or another of its (increasingly few) rivals in the pro-regime propaganda business -- to be born.
Were he to say forthrightly that Wright is right -- except maybe for one over the top remark about the government’s role in spreading HIV/AIDS in the black community and, of course, for the godly spin that shrouds his otherwise keen observations – Obama would move out of the lesser evil category into the ranks of candidates who are worth supporting with (measured and critical) enthusiasm, and not just because of whom they are running against. But this is even less likely than that she whom Obama is running against will come to the aid of her party by just going away. Nevertheless, the fact remains: what the good Reverend said about racism and America’s role in the world is on point, timely and urgent. If there is a pundit sophistically clever enough to show (not just assert) otherwise, she or he is still slouching towards CNN headquarters --or the headquarters of one or another of its (increasingly few) rivals in the pro-regime propaganda business -- to be born.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Obama's Speech on Race
Everyone agrees: Barack Obama delivered a high minded, cogent and moving speech on race at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia. He handled his Jeremiah Wright problem deftly. Having to deal both with the traditional, anti-Hillary “great right-wing conspiracy” and with the Clintons’ own right-wing conspiracy, he could hardly have sided more overtly with Wright. Not wanting to alienate everyone else, and for reasons of personal integrity too, he could hardly have denounced Wright more than he did. He seems to have found the “golden mean.” In doing so, perhaps he will succeed in moving the electoral contest to higher ground, notwithstanding media like Fox News hell bent on moronizing political discourse.
Of course, the problem isn’t just Fox News; it’s also the liberals. For an especially perspicuous example, take Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen’s account of Obama’s “pastor problem” published the morning of the speech. Cohen likened Wright to David Duke and, just to show his thinking isn’t too Israel-centric, Meir Kahane. Gimme a break! Wright is no racist. By all accounts, he’s been a major force for good, as I’ve pointed out in earlier entries. Moreover, as I’ve also pointed out, most of what he said is unequivocally true; the rest is, at worst, hyperbolic. That’s why, despite its brilliance, I still have trouble with Obama’s speech.
Yes, Wright did go over the top if he said, as reported, that the government introduced HIV/AIDS into the black community or that it promotes drug use among African Americans. Such things do happen, of course, when one people dominates another: ask our Amerindian aboriginal peoples whose ancestors were given small-pox infected blankets or the descendants of survivors of the Opium Wars. There are many other examples as well. Moreover, in this age of corporate globalization -- where jobs, especially manufacturing jobs, are in short supply -- our ruling classes have come to regard the black people they can’t coopt or make bourgeois as a surplus population, fit for little more than incarceration. They don’t even need them for a “reserve army of labor”; not when it’s so easy to lower labor costs by shipping jobs overseas. But kill them with AIDS? Or drug them into passivity? Not likely. If Wright suggested these things in his sermons, the Holy Spirit must have gotten the better of him.
Wright’s other publicized remarks are thoroughly reasonable: institutional racism was indeed a founding principle of our union. It is inscribed in the Constitution. In fact, it took a Civil War to redress that problem -- partially and very imperfectly. It can get better, as Obama pointed out, but sugar-coating the past is not the way to make it so. Far better, as Immanuel Kant would say, “to dare to know” or, as I would say, “to call a spade a spade.”
Neither is there any doubt that the U.S. supported state terrorism in Apartheid South Africa and in Apartheid Palestine, where it continues to do so (today more than ever). Is it incendiary and offensive to express solidarity with a people living for generations under a brutal occupation? It is indeed in the political culture of the Land of the Free, but not for anyone who wants, as the Clintons would say, to “get real.’
Wright’s “God damm America” remark plays well on cable TV, but it’s essentially meaningless, much like the “God bless America” blather that has now fortunately subsided a little since it erupted with full force after 9/11. The Reverend is a man of the cloth -- that’s his one and only “sin” -- so perhaps he does think he can confer blessings and curses, but to a “reasonable person” “God damn America” just means “boo America” -- a perfectly reasonable thing to say in the context in which Wright said it.
That leaves the comment that, I suspect, rankles the most: the claim that the United States brought 9/11 upon itself. But, if it didn’t, what did? Do the purveyors of conventional wisdom think it’s because “they [evil Muslims] hate our freedom?” Do they agree with the Bush boy about that? 9/11 was blowback. If we don’t want to be mired forever in the so-called “war on terror” – in other words, if we don’t want perpetual war for the sake of empire – then we need to confront that reality too.
How much better it would have been if Obama had pointed these things out! Instead, he told only part of the story. Of course, as Obama said, African Americans of Wright’s age harbor anger that we white folks need to recognize and respect. He might have added that younger African Americans, along with most everyone else, do too, and they have every reason and right. Expressing that anger is not offensive or incendiary; it’s honest. It’s also indispensable if we’re ever to get beyond where we now are.
It was wonderful to see Obama put America’s racial problems in the context of its class divisions and class struggles. Of the major Democratic contenders for the nomination, only John Edwards had done anything like that before. Needless to say, the liberal media have taken no notice. Nothing slows down their condescending references to (white) “blue collar” racism. But here’s a news flash: workers aren’t the problem, prevaricating liberals are.
Like the liberal media, the Clinton camp is full of them. My worry is that Obama is one of them too. He has certainly appeared that way throughout the campaign. However his Philadelphia speech does provide a glimmer of hope that he can transcend the horizons of Democratic Party politics after all. But only a glimmer, and we’ll have to elect him to find out. In the context of an Amerik(kk)an election, with the Clinton (and McCain) attack machines ready to pounce and media working 24/7 to dumb everyone down, it may just be too impolitic to face reality squarely or to propose, credibly and substantively, to change the status quo fundamentally.
Of course, the problem isn’t just Fox News; it’s also the liberals. For an especially perspicuous example, take Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen’s account of Obama’s “pastor problem” published the morning of the speech. Cohen likened Wright to David Duke and, just to show his thinking isn’t too Israel-centric, Meir Kahane. Gimme a break! Wright is no racist. By all accounts, he’s been a major force for good, as I’ve pointed out in earlier entries. Moreover, as I’ve also pointed out, most of what he said is unequivocally true; the rest is, at worst, hyperbolic. That’s why, despite its brilliance, I still have trouble with Obama’s speech.
Yes, Wright did go over the top if he said, as reported, that the government introduced HIV/AIDS into the black community or that it promotes drug use among African Americans. Such things do happen, of course, when one people dominates another: ask our Amerindian aboriginal peoples whose ancestors were given small-pox infected blankets or the descendants of survivors of the Opium Wars. There are many other examples as well. Moreover, in this age of corporate globalization -- where jobs, especially manufacturing jobs, are in short supply -- our ruling classes have come to regard the black people they can’t coopt or make bourgeois as a surplus population, fit for little more than incarceration. They don’t even need them for a “reserve army of labor”; not when it’s so easy to lower labor costs by shipping jobs overseas. But kill them with AIDS? Or drug them into passivity? Not likely. If Wright suggested these things in his sermons, the Holy Spirit must have gotten the better of him.
Wright’s other publicized remarks are thoroughly reasonable: institutional racism was indeed a founding principle of our union. It is inscribed in the Constitution. In fact, it took a Civil War to redress that problem -- partially and very imperfectly. It can get better, as Obama pointed out, but sugar-coating the past is not the way to make it so. Far better, as Immanuel Kant would say, “to dare to know” or, as I would say, “to call a spade a spade.”
Neither is there any doubt that the U.S. supported state terrorism in Apartheid South Africa and in Apartheid Palestine, where it continues to do so (today more than ever). Is it incendiary and offensive to express solidarity with a people living for generations under a brutal occupation? It is indeed in the political culture of the Land of the Free, but not for anyone who wants, as the Clintons would say, to “get real.’
Wright’s “God damm America” remark plays well on cable TV, but it’s essentially meaningless, much like the “God bless America” blather that has now fortunately subsided a little since it erupted with full force after 9/11. The Reverend is a man of the cloth -- that’s his one and only “sin” -- so perhaps he does think he can confer blessings and curses, but to a “reasonable person” “God damn America” just means “boo America” -- a perfectly reasonable thing to say in the context in which Wright said it.
That leaves the comment that, I suspect, rankles the most: the claim that the United States brought 9/11 upon itself. But, if it didn’t, what did? Do the purveyors of conventional wisdom think it’s because “they [evil Muslims] hate our freedom?” Do they agree with the Bush boy about that? 9/11 was blowback. If we don’t want to be mired forever in the so-called “war on terror” – in other words, if we don’t want perpetual war for the sake of empire – then we need to confront that reality too.
How much better it would have been if Obama had pointed these things out! Instead, he told only part of the story. Of course, as Obama said, African Americans of Wright’s age harbor anger that we white folks need to recognize and respect. He might have added that younger African Americans, along with most everyone else, do too, and they have every reason and right. Expressing that anger is not offensive or incendiary; it’s honest. It’s also indispensable if we’re ever to get beyond where we now are.
It was wonderful to see Obama put America’s racial problems in the context of its class divisions and class struggles. Of the major Democratic contenders for the nomination, only John Edwards had done anything like that before. Needless to say, the liberal media have taken no notice. Nothing slows down their condescending references to (white) “blue collar” racism. But here’s a news flash: workers aren’t the problem, prevaricating liberals are.
Like the liberal media, the Clinton camp is full of them. My worry is that Obama is one of them too. He has certainly appeared that way throughout the campaign. However his Philadelphia speech does provide a glimmer of hope that he can transcend the horizons of Democratic Party politics after all. But only a glimmer, and we’ll have to elect him to find out. In the context of an Amerik(kk)an election, with the Clinton (and McCain) attack machines ready to pounce and media working 24/7 to dumb everyone down, it may just be too impolitic to face reality squarely or to propose, credibly and substantively, to change the status quo fundamentally.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Wright is Right (About Some Things)
The Clinton (or is it the McCain?) attack machine has now turned on Barack Obama by targeting his pastor, Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Obama then forced Wright to step down from an advisory post on his campaign’s African American Religious Leadership Committee. Not unrelatedly, Wright is also retiring from his position at Obama’s church.
There’s a certain irony here, as in much that the Clintons do when they throw “the kitchen sink” at their rivals. There is an inexpugnable rumor in right-wing circles that Obama is a Muslim. Who knows who started it. But Hillary has been quoted as saying that “as far as [she] knows,” there’s nothing to that “charge.” One would think that her supporters, especially the erstwhile ladies’ libbers who have morphed into high-minded liberal ladies would object; after all, their politics is all about niceness and “celebrating difference.” But because they think that electing Bill Clinton’s wife would constitute a great leap forward for Womankind, they are her most loyal constituency; in their eyes, she can do no wrong. So they will not insist that she say something like -- “so what if he is a Muslim?” – not if illiberal words can do Obama harm. It’s not just the Clintons who are unprincipled opportunists; many of their supporters are too.
However, there is indeed something to be wary of in the Obama-Wright connection – namely, that it exists at all. There are many reasons why, in the days of slavery and segregation and even nowadays in some quarters, the Black Church was black America’s “salvation.” For one thing, thanks to white Southern piety (or fear of impiety), it was comparatively immune from racism’s worst predations. It is therefore not surprising that, at the height of the civil rights movement and subsequently, some black clergymen would become prominent in the struggle. But Obama is not from that world. Were he “spiritually” or politically connected to his pastor only for appearance sake – because American politicians cannot seem ungodly to a benighted electorate -- then his ties to Wright might be forgivable. But this does not seem to be the case. By all accounts, Obama is a believer. More than two centuries after enlightened thinkers definitively exploded the beliefs upon which Christianity (and other Abrahamic religions) rest, there is no excuse for this. [In fact, I suspect that Obama, like most Americans, deceives himself about faith. As a well educated, intelligent and thoughtful person, he can’t really believe such nonsense, though he probably thinks he does, for any of a variety of morally and psychologically suspect reasons.] The same criticism applies of course to Hillary Clinton. To the degree that her vaunted religiosity is not feigned or that she is not in a state of self-deception, there is reason to worry about her judgment too.
Obama’s “faith” is troubling, but what Reverend Wright said is not. It’s right on. For example, in a sermon on the Sunday after 9/11, Wright purportedly suggested that the United States brought the attacks on itself. The New York Times quotes him as saying: “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.” Don’t expect Obama or Hillary and Bill or any other prominent Democrat to sign on to this, but since they’re not idiots and they’re reasonably well informed, in their hearts they know he’s right.
Then, according to the same article, Wright said: “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
Malcolm X got into trouble with liberals after the Kennedy assassination for using that expression about the chickens. Malcolm is no longer demonized the way he used to be; he has even become something of an icon in popular culture. But Wright’s reference to chickens coming home to roost conjures up the bad old days; no matter that what he – and Malcolm – said is true. Wright is also guilty of stepping on the Third Rail of American (especially Democratic party) politics – by saying something that could be construed as less than unabashed praise for the state of Israel and its crimes. His remark about supporting the use of state terrorism against Palestinians, though obviously true, crossed a line where a pusillanimous Obama, aspiring to lead the Party of Pusillanimity, dares not go.
[As I’ve noted before, Obama wasn’t always as servile as he now is on the Israel/Palestine Question. Expect his good deeds to come back to haunt him.]
Then in a 2003 sermon, according to The Times, Wright said that blacks should condemn the United States. “The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn American for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.” Apart from the reference to the Bible, there is nothing to fault in this either. [What Wright said is remarkable because it implies, no doubt unwittingly, that, like America, God, if He existed, would have to be counted as cruel and incompetent and generally full of Himself.]
Wright also said that we live “in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” and that “Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger.” Can anyone deny this? Can Obama, even as he distances himself from it?
Apparently, Wright is also “guilty” of identifying America with the Ku Klux Klan, by having used three “ks” to spell “Amerikkka.” In the Black Power days, this spelling was a way of calling attention to the centrality of African American oppression throughout American history. In the same period, many white leftists took to substituting a “k” (only one) for the “c” in “America.” Then the reference was to Kafka’s novel, Amerika, and thereby to the absurdity of the ambient culture. There was also the implication that the Land of the Free had come to be of a piece with authoritarian (perhaps even Nazi) Germany. In this regard, it is interesting to observe how profoundly impressions have changed after Cheney and Bush and their Democratic enablers. Today, in comparison with the United States, Germany is a bastion of decency, human rights and the rule of law; and everybody knows it, even in the United States.
In recent decades, these spellings have rankled self-declared patriotic leftists of the old school – the now deceased Richard Rorty is a prime example. These are people who deserve to be irritated at every opportunity. I won’t engage their “arguments” here except to note that both Obama and Clinton are in their camp. Verbal patriotism is not the only reason those two are scoundrels, but it helps assuage their bad consciences. It helps them think they’re doing the right thing when they “support the troops” by funding wars they claim to oppose. Even worse, it helps them to support Cheney’s and Bush’s war aims, by conceding the “need” for a quasi-permanent Amerikkkan/Amerikan presence in Iraq.
In a word, Wright is more right than Obama. Except for the “reverend” thing (assuming his faith is for real), better he than Obama to rid us of those dreadful and pestiferous Clintons. Too bad that the negative forces the Clintons unleashed have dealt him such a low blow. According to The Times, the United Church of Christ issued a 1400 word statement praising Wright’s church for its community service and work to nurture youth. It also praised the pastor for speaking out against homophobia and sexism in the black community. Shame on the Clintons (and/or McCain) for turning the media against him, and on the godly Obama for not standing by his man. Evidently, in Amerik(kk)a nowadays, audacity, like hope – and loyalty too -- has its limits.
There’s a certain irony here, as in much that the Clintons do when they throw “the kitchen sink” at their rivals. There is an inexpugnable rumor in right-wing circles that Obama is a Muslim. Who knows who started it. But Hillary has been quoted as saying that “as far as [she] knows,” there’s nothing to that “charge.” One would think that her supporters, especially the erstwhile ladies’ libbers who have morphed into high-minded liberal ladies would object; after all, their politics is all about niceness and “celebrating difference.” But because they think that electing Bill Clinton’s wife would constitute a great leap forward for Womankind, they are her most loyal constituency; in their eyes, she can do no wrong. So they will not insist that she say something like -- “so what if he is a Muslim?” – not if illiberal words can do Obama harm. It’s not just the Clintons who are unprincipled opportunists; many of their supporters are too.
However, there is indeed something to be wary of in the Obama-Wright connection – namely, that it exists at all. There are many reasons why, in the days of slavery and segregation and even nowadays in some quarters, the Black Church was black America’s “salvation.” For one thing, thanks to white Southern piety (or fear of impiety), it was comparatively immune from racism’s worst predations. It is therefore not surprising that, at the height of the civil rights movement and subsequently, some black clergymen would become prominent in the struggle. But Obama is not from that world. Were he “spiritually” or politically connected to his pastor only for appearance sake – because American politicians cannot seem ungodly to a benighted electorate -- then his ties to Wright might be forgivable. But this does not seem to be the case. By all accounts, Obama is a believer. More than two centuries after enlightened thinkers definitively exploded the beliefs upon which Christianity (and other Abrahamic religions) rest, there is no excuse for this. [In fact, I suspect that Obama, like most Americans, deceives himself about faith. As a well educated, intelligent and thoughtful person, he can’t really believe such nonsense, though he probably thinks he does, for any of a variety of morally and psychologically suspect reasons.] The same criticism applies of course to Hillary Clinton. To the degree that her vaunted religiosity is not feigned or that she is not in a state of self-deception, there is reason to worry about her judgment too.
Obama’s “faith” is troubling, but what Reverend Wright said is not. It’s right on. For example, in a sermon on the Sunday after 9/11, Wright purportedly suggested that the United States brought the attacks on itself. The New York Times quotes him as saying: “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.” Don’t expect Obama or Hillary and Bill or any other prominent Democrat to sign on to this, but since they’re not idiots and they’re reasonably well informed, in their hearts they know he’s right.
Then, according to the same article, Wright said: “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
Malcolm X got into trouble with liberals after the Kennedy assassination for using that expression about the chickens. Malcolm is no longer demonized the way he used to be; he has even become something of an icon in popular culture. But Wright’s reference to chickens coming home to roost conjures up the bad old days; no matter that what he – and Malcolm – said is true. Wright is also guilty of stepping on the Third Rail of American (especially Democratic party) politics – by saying something that could be construed as less than unabashed praise for the state of Israel and its crimes. His remark about supporting the use of state terrorism against Palestinians, though obviously true, crossed a line where a pusillanimous Obama, aspiring to lead the Party of Pusillanimity, dares not go.
[As I’ve noted before, Obama wasn’t always as servile as he now is on the Israel/Palestine Question. Expect his good deeds to come back to haunt him.]
Then in a 2003 sermon, according to The Times, Wright said that blacks should condemn the United States. “The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn American for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.” Apart from the reference to the Bible, there is nothing to fault in this either. [What Wright said is remarkable because it implies, no doubt unwittingly, that, like America, God, if He existed, would have to be counted as cruel and incompetent and generally full of Himself.]
Wright also said that we live “in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” and that “Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger.” Can anyone deny this? Can Obama, even as he distances himself from it?
Apparently, Wright is also “guilty” of identifying America with the Ku Klux Klan, by having used three “ks” to spell “Amerikkka.” In the Black Power days, this spelling was a way of calling attention to the centrality of African American oppression throughout American history. In the same period, many white leftists took to substituting a “k” (only one) for the “c” in “America.” Then the reference was to Kafka’s novel, Amerika, and thereby to the absurdity of the ambient culture. There was also the implication that the Land of the Free had come to be of a piece with authoritarian (perhaps even Nazi) Germany. In this regard, it is interesting to observe how profoundly impressions have changed after Cheney and Bush and their Democratic enablers. Today, in comparison with the United States, Germany is a bastion of decency, human rights and the rule of law; and everybody knows it, even in the United States.
In recent decades, these spellings have rankled self-declared patriotic leftists of the old school – the now deceased Richard Rorty is a prime example. These are people who deserve to be irritated at every opportunity. I won’t engage their “arguments” here except to note that both Obama and Clinton are in their camp. Verbal patriotism is not the only reason those two are scoundrels, but it helps assuage their bad consciences. It helps them think they’re doing the right thing when they “support the troops” by funding wars they claim to oppose. Even worse, it helps them to support Cheney’s and Bush’s war aims, by conceding the “need” for a quasi-permanent Amerikkkan/Amerikan presence in Iraq.
In a word, Wright is more right than Obama. Except for the “reverend” thing (assuming his faith is for real), better he than Obama to rid us of those dreadful and pestiferous Clintons. Too bad that the negative forces the Clintons unleashed have dealt him such a low blow. According to The Times, the United Church of Christ issued a 1400 word statement praising Wright’s church for its community service and work to nurture youth. It also praised the pastor for speaking out against homophobia and sexism in the black community. Shame on the Clintons (and/or McCain) for turning the media against him, and on the godly Obama for not standing by his man. Evidently, in Amerik(kk)a nowadays, audacity, like hope – and loyalty too -- has its limits.
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